Abbassi Madani

Abbassi Madani (1931-) was the President of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) political party of Algeria from its 1989 founding until its 1992 ban by the military government.

Biography
Abbassi Madani was born in 1931 in Diyar Ben Aissa, Biskra Province, Algeria to a Sunni Muslim family. In his youth, he joined the FLN and took part in the bombing of an Algiers radio facility on 1 November 1954 at the start of the Algerian Civil War. From 1975 to 1978, he studied educational psychology, and he became a professor of educational sciences at the University of Algiers. Later, Madani grew disenchanted with the FLN's socialist and secularist stance on politics, and in 1989 he founded the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) when a multi-party system was established. The FIS won the 1990 elections, but the military launched a coup and established a military government, which voided the results of the elections. Madani was imprisoned during the Algerian Civil War, which saw Islamist rebels rise up against the government and launch terrorist attacks in both Algeria and France; in December 1994, the hijackers of Air France Flight 8969 demanded Madani's release. He represented the moderate FIS faction during the 1990s, opposing Ali Belhadj's extremist views, and he believed in segregation of men and women, free markets, early Islamic education, Arabization of education and government, and sharia law. Madani supported democracy as long as it did not override Islamic law. In January 2011, he fled to Qatar during the Arab Spring unrest in Algeria.